Post on 15-Dec-2016
by Emily Puckett Rodgers and Kristin Fontichiaro
IN
FO
R
M
ATION
EXP
L
ORER
IN
FO
R
M
ATION
EXP
L
ORER
SHARED CREATIONS: MAKING USE OF
CREATIVE COMMONS
Published in the United States of America
by Cherry Lake Publishing
Ann Arbor, Michigan
www.cherrylakepublishing.com
Content Adviser: Gail Dickinson, PhD, Associate Professor,
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia
Photo Credits: Cover, ©NASA Goddard Photo and Video
/ http://www.flickr.com / CC-B-2.0; page 4 ©woodleywonderworks0 / http://www.flickr.
com / CC-BY-2.0; page 5, © MikeBlogs / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-2.0; page 7, ©Skokie
Northshore Sculpture Par / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-SA-2.0; page 10, ©racheocity
/ http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY--ND-2.0; page 11, George Washington, by Gilbert Stuart
(Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute); page 13, ©puuikibeach / http://www.flickr.com
/ CC-BY-2.0; page 15, ©net_efekt / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-2.0; page 16, ©Bhavna
Sayana / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-2.0; page 17 ©cambodia4kidsorg / http://www.
flickr.com / CC-BY-2.0; page 21, ©xoque / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-SA-2.0; page
23, This is a derivative of ©xoque / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-SA-2.0; page 24, U.S.
Airforce Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain; page 27, This is
a derivative of ©aussiegall / http://www.flickr.com / CC-BY-2.0; page 28, Clock designed
by Luis Prado from The Noun Project, Flower from The Noun Project, Palm Tree designed
by Jouko Luhola from The Noun Project, Laptop designed by Sam Ahmed from The
Noun Project, Soccer designed by Derek Britton from The Noun Project, School Bus Stop
collaboration by Edward Boatman, Shan Gao, Gene Lu, and Tina Ye.
Copyright ©2013 by Cherry Lake Publishing
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported license. To view a copy of this license, go to http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rodgers, Emily Puckett.
Shared creations : making use of Creative Commons / by Emily Puckett Rodgers and
Kristin Fontichiaro.
pages cm. — (Information explorer)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62431-020-1 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-1-62431-044-7 (pbk.) —
ISBN 978-1-62431-068-3 (e-book)
1. Copyright—Juvenile literature. 2. Public domain (Copyright law)--Juvenile literature.
3. Copyright licenses—Juvenile literature. 4. Creative Commons (Organization)—Juvenile
literature. 5. Information commons—Juvenile literature. I. Fontichiaro, Kristin. II. Title.
K1440.F66 2013
346.04'82—dc23 2012035760
Cherry Lake Publishing would like to acknowledge the work of The Partnership for 21st
Century Skills. Please visit www.21stcenturyskills.org for more information.
Printed in the United States of America
Corporate Graphics Inc.
January 2013
CLSP12
Always remember
your safety comes
first!
remind your children how to stay safe online before they do the activities in this book.
What Is Copyright?
Public Domain, Trademarks, and Patents
Sharing with Creative Commons
Chapter Four
Choosing the License and Giving Credit
Chapter Five
Finding Creative Commons Materials for Your Class Projects
Glossary
Index
About the Authors
4
11
15
23
2730
31
32
32
Table ofContents
4
C H A P T E R O N E
What Is Copyright?
What Is C
opyrig
ht?
You’ve worked hard on a great slideshow presentation.
It has plenty of pictures. When you post it to your class
Web site, your teacher says, “This is good work, but you
really shouldn’t use other people’s copyrighted materi-
als in your slides.” What does that mean?
Your teacher is reminding you that—oops!—you
used other people’s words, videos, audio recordings,
or images in your project. Then you published their
work with yours, without asking their permission.
5
You probably found the information in books, films, Web
sites, or other sources. Though you may not have copied
their works directly, you still need to give them credit.
What is copyright? You may have seen words
like “copyright 2013” or “© 2013” in books, on CD
sleeves, or in movie credits. Copyright means that the
person or organization that created the work gets to
decide how it is used. From the moment an article,
picture, note, poster, podcast, or video is created, that
work is automatically protected by U.S. and interna-
tional copyright law. That gives the creators control
over how their works are used by others. The same is
6
What Is C
opyrig
ht?
true for you—from the moment you create something,
copyright law protects your work. Even if you find
something online, it’s still copyrighted unless it says
otherwise. It never hurts to add “copyright 2013” to
your work. But even without those words, someone’s
work is protected in the same way those movies or CDs
are. Some people mail their work off to the Library of
Congress, but this isn’t necessary.
Copyright is actually a set of five rights. These
rights let the creator of a work decide how others can
use that work. Creators control who can:
1. make copies of their work, such as prints,
photocopies, or electronic copies;
2. make any derivatives, which are new versions
or adaptations of a work, whether using part of
the work or all of it;
3. distribute copies of the work, such as in a
bookstore or on a Web site;
4. display the work in public, for example, at an
art gallery or on a Web site; and
7
5. publicly perform the work if the work is a play,
piece of music, ballet, or anything else that can
be performed by others.
A creative work is original writing, art, photo-
graphs, audio, images, music scores, song lyrics, or
even the dance steps for a ballet company. All of those
can be copyrighted. It doesn’t matter whether a famous
author like Rick Riordan creates it or whether you do.
It’s one of your rights as a world citizen.
Anything you create is automatically protected by copyright.
8
Your works are copyrighted, but you cannot copy-
right ideas. Imagine that Grace came up with a cool idea
to thread beads through her shoelaces. Right now, it’s
just an idea. Because ideas cannot be copyrighted, any-
one else can thread beads through their shoelaces and
it’s perfectly OK. However, if Grace took a photograph
of those beads, the photo is automatically copyrighted.
What about Grace’s video demonstration, her project
sketch, or her pamphlet of directions on how to thread
beads through shoelaces? They are automatically copy-
righted, too. All of these put the idea into what copyright
experts call a tangible format—a documentation of the
idea, written or recorded in Grace’s unique way. It’s
Grace’s expression (or version) of the idea that is hers
to use and to give permission to others to use.
What Is C
opyrig
ht?
documentations of a
n idea.
9
T RY THIS!
Create some copyr
ighted work!
Gather a group
of friends. Give each
person (and yourself) a bl
ank piece of
paper. Call out s
omething for everyone to
dog. After ever
yone has had a chan
ce to
are all differen
t! You cannot copyright
drawing is automatically
copyrighted!
www.cherrylakepublishing.com/activities.
10
Once Grace’s ideas are in a tangible format, could
other people sell copies of her brochure? Turn in her
brochure with their name on it as author? Make a CD
or MP3 audio recording in which they read her writing
out loud? Write and perform a play or TV show based
on her video? Post her photograph on a Web page, wiki,
or blog? The answer is no, unless Grace gives those
people specific permission. In fact, if they try to put
their name on Grace’s work and claim they created it,
it is plagiarism. This is stealing.
Copyright is a powerful idea and a powerful gift from
countries to their citizen creators. It allows creators to be
in charge of their work and to decide how it is used.
What Is C
opyrig
ht?
Anyone can braid their shoelaces. But a person needs special permission to use a photograph of braided shoelaces.
11
C H A P T E R T W O
Public Domain, Trademarks, and Patents
Another important part of copyright law is that copyright
doesn’t last forever. When copyright expires, the work is
then considered part of the public domain. Public domain
works “belong” to everyone to sell, change, mash up, mix
painting of George Washington is in the
can use it freely. You can even alter it to fit your project’s needs.
12
up, and use to create new projects. Today, copyright expires
70 years after an author or a creator passes away. Also,
any work created in the United States before 1923 is auto-
matically in the public domain. It’s a trade-off: the govern-
ment protects the creator’s work during his or her lifetime
(and beyond). In exchange, the creator returns the work to
the world afterward so that new work can be made from
it. This allows us to create new things that build on earlier
artists’ creativity and expression. The materials created
by people who work in the U.S. government is in the public
domain, too. Some people even choose to give their works to
the public domain right away. Together, we own a lot of pub-
lic domain materials.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
Peter Pan
by Beatrix Potter
13
Remember how ideas cannot be copyrighted? There
are other things that do not get copyright protection. For
example, you cannot copyright basic facts, book titles, or
fashion designs for clothing. Ingredient lists in recipes
cannot be copyrighted, although illustrations or descrip-
tions of the food and how to make it can be. Also, copy-
right is only one part of a larger set of protections and
permissions called intellectual property. Intellectual prop-
erty includes trademarks and patents. To protect their
logos, companies can trademark them. The Nike swoosh
and the McDonald’s golden arches are registered trade-
marks. Inventions, which include drawings, blueprints,
Logos such as Nike’s Swoosh symbol are trademarked.
14
T RY THIS!
1. A quote from the U.S. Constitution
3. A photograph of your pet
6. Beyoncé’s newest hit
Little House on the Prairie
ANSWERS
3. Yes
6. Yes
www.cherrylakepublish
ing.com/activities.
and descriptive writing, are protected by patents. Because
there is a lot of competition over inventions, patents must
be registered with the U.S. government.
15
C H A P T E R T H R E E
Sharing with
Creative Commons
Let’s go back to the problem in the first chapter: needing
to ask permission before using someone’s copyrighted
work. You make so many projects that are posted online
or shared with others that it would be really inconve-
nient to ask for permission for every photo in every
project, right? Life in the digital world moves much too
fast for that, even though it is the right thing to do.
Creative Commons makes it easier to share
16
What if there were a way for people to say up front, “I
made this, I own the copyright, but you can use it if you
want. Here’s how you can use it without having to ask”?
There is! It’s called Creative Commons, and many peo-
ple have adopted it as a way of thinking about copyright
and sharing. Creative Commons is an organization that
has designed a system to show how a copyrighted work
can be used. Its goal is to help people share their creative
work in ways that make sense in today’s digital world. It
is a growing movement, and lots of organizations—from
car manufacturers to major universities—are using it so
materials are shared and reused more quickly. By using
Creative Commons licenses (or CC licenses), creators allow
with C
reative C
ommons
People can choose to give their photos a Creative
Commons license so other people can use them easily.
17
other people to share—legally—in the experience of mak-
ing something new. We learn together, we share together.
Each creator decides how to license his or her work.
Imagine that Maria has just taken a great photo of Mount
Rushmore. She uses it in her report, and she thinks other
kids might want to use it in theirs. What options does
she have? One way is to do things the traditional way
and require that people ask permission. Secondly, she
could put her photo immediately into the public domain.
Finally, she could hold on to her copyright but give it a
Creative Commons license to encourage sharing. Creative
Commons has designed six possible licenses. Each one
can be abbreviated using the code words in parentheses.
Creative Commons
was created to
encourage sharing.
18
with C
reative C
ommons
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
This is the most open license. It means that others can
take Maria’s photo and do whatever they want with
it: sell it, crop it so we only see George Washington’s
face, draw a mustache on the faces, add words and turn
it into a poster, or change it from color to black and
white. However, they must give credit to Maria as the
original photographer. This is what we mean by giving
someone attribution.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
This license means that someone can do any of the things above. However, if someone uses Maria’s CC BY-SA photo and adds his or her own words to make a poster, that person must give the poster a CC BY-SA license, too. So should someone who changes the colors in the photo or changes it in any other way.
19
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
If Maria picks this license, other people can still use or change her photograph. But it must stay in the noncom-mercial world. This means that only Maria can make money from her photo. For example, Maria’s teacher can use Maria’s photo in a slideshow of national parks, as long as she gives credit to Maria. She can even share it with another teacher to use in his classroom. However, Maria’s teacher could not sell copies of her slideshow. Then the teacher would have earned money from Maria’s photo.
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
Let’s say that Maria loves her photograph exactly the
way it is. She is happy to share it, but she doesn’t want
anybody cutting off part of her photo, changing the
color, or adding a mustache. By picking this license, she
tells people they are welcome to use her photo if they
give her credit. But they cannot change it in any way or
make any derivatives. They must reuse the original work
as a whole.
20
with C
reative C
ommons
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike
(CC BY-NC-SA)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
This is a combination of a few of the licenses above. If
Maria licenses her photo this way, people have to give
credit but cannot use it to make money. Additionally,
whatever they create using Maria’s photo must be
licensed under the same license Maria chose: CC
BY-NC-SA.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This is the most limited license. People can use and share Maria’s photo, but they can’t change it. They also cannot make money from it.
21
There are a lot of options for how to allow people to
use a work. The same licenses would be used if, instead of
a photo, Maria wanted to share her book, brochure, paint-
ing, music composition, song lyrics, podcast, or video. The
licenses work for all kinds of creative work. There’s even
a tool to help you choose the license that is the best fit for
you. Just visit http://creativecommons.org/choose.
But how do people know which license you’ve cho-
sen? We’ll talk about that next.
chooses how other people are allowed to use it.
22
T RY THIS!
Which license would you choose
for these works? Be sure to give
reasons that support your choice.
www.cherrylakepublishing.com/activities.
1. You are part
of a volunteer
group that w
ants to remind
kids to wear a
bike helmet.
You make a public se
rvice
announcement and want
people to spr
ead the word
everywhere.
with C
reative C
ommons
You want to upload a scan of your favorite art project so other people can see it. You’d be happy if people used your scan on their Web
your photo on them.
3. Your friend’s mom has written a seashell identification guide. She would love for seashell fans to use it and share it with each other. It would even be fun if somebody translated it so it could be used in another country. But she doesn’t want someone to make money from her guide or their versions of it.
4. Your student council wrote
an antibullying song. You hope
that every school w
ill adopt
it and that some singers will
record it. Getting people to
and you don’t mind if some
of the musicians make money
from playing it.
5.
this book’s title page. Why do you think the publisher chose this Creative Commons license? What does it give you permission to do? What does it not give you permission to do?
23
C H A P T E R F O U R
Choosing the License and Giving Credit
Earlier, Maria decided to share her Mount Rushmore
photo and give people permission to use it. After talk-
ing with her parents, she chose a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Maria
isn’t giving up her copyright by choosing a Creative
A user can add to or subtract from a Creative Commons photo that allows derivatives.
24
License a
nd G
ivin
g C
redit
Commons license. The license just tells people what
they can do with her copyrighted work.
Now Maria has to let people know that her work
has been licensed. She can show someone she has
added a CC license to her work in a few ways:
Use the icon:
Write out the full title of the license: Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
Use the abbreviation: CC BY-SA
Select a CC license option when uploading the
project to a sharing site like Flickr.com or
YouTube.com
25
Not everybody knows Creative Commons as well as
they know the © symbol for copyright. Because of this,
the licensing label on your work should include a link
back to the appropriate license page on the Creative
Commons Web site (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses). For example, for the CC BY-SA license above,
you would link to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-sa/3.0/. This allows someone to read the license and
understand what he or she can do with your work.
You can put the licensing information and link on
the title page or an
attributions page at the
end of a presentation or
report. You can add it
to video credits or make
a note in the corner
of a photograph. Just
make sure a reader
or viewer can find the
Uniform Resource Locator (URL), or
Web address. Including the word copy-
right and the date a work was created
is a good habit. It reminds others that
your work is still yours. The Creative
Commons license just explains how
you are sharing your rights as a copy-
right holder.
CC
26
If Jeremy crops and uses Maria’s photo in his History
Day poster, he needs to show that he has used her photo.
He can use the memory clue TASL (said like “tassel”)
to remember how to give her credit: Title of the work,
Author (or creator), Source (where he found it), and
License. Here is an example:
“Mount Rushmore” photo by Maria Fuente on Flickr
.com. Used with a Creative Commons BY-SA license.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
If you make something on the computer that won’t
get printed out, you can also include a link to the license
for others to read. Like this:
Emily Puckett Rodgers. Copyright 2013. This work
is licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution 3.0
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
License a
nd G
ivin
g C
redit
TRY THIS!
Are you curious
about what kin
ds of
Creative Commons sear
ch tool at
.
Can you find the th
ings listed below
by searching ther
e? What Creative
Commons license did the creator
choose for eac
h example?
www.cherrylakepub
lishing.com/activities.
1. Photo of a dog
by the composer Ludwig van Beethoven
3. Piece of clip art of a computer
2727
C H A P T E R F I V E
Finding Creative
Commons Materials
for Your Class
Projects
Now you know how to find out if a work is licensed under
Creative Commons. But where can you go to find great
Creative Commons images, audio recordings, videos, and
Creative Commons materials.
28
for Y
our C
lass P
roject
s
text? Actually, it’s easy, and there are millions of materi-
als that have been licensed for this purpose!
One great place to start is Creative Commons
Search page, http://search.creativecommons.org. It
will search numerous libraries of CC content. These
libraries include Google Images for photos and draw-
ings, YouTube for videos, Jamendo for music, and
Wikimedia Commons for all types of media. You can
also use the advanced search feature of Google.com.
Start a search, then click on the gear in the right-hand
corner of the screen to choose advanced settings. For
CC images, http://FlickrCC.bluemountains.net and
http://TheNounProject.com have easy search options.
simple icons such as
these freely available to
the public.
29
T RY THIS!
Write a short st
ory and have a frien
d do the
accompany your friend’s sto
ry using the
(
Commons search (www.flickr.c
om/creativecommons
the Flickr.cc search
tool (
bluemountains.net
search (
; click on the ge
ar
after you star
t your search
to get to adva
nced
settings). Remember to add the
image’s attribut
ion
either right bel
ow the image or
on a special
attributions page
at the end of th
e story.
www.cherrylakepublishing.com/activities.
While these search tools do a great job, you also
need to check the license for whatever you find.
Make sure you understand how you can use the
image or other material.
You know how to search, use, and license
Creative Commons content. You’re now part of the
community of creators who share and build on each
other’s work. Welcome!
The Mountain
That Cried
30
Glossary attribution (a-truh-BYOO-shuhn) a note giving credit to another
source or work
copyrighted (KAH-pee-rite-id) legally controlled by an author, art-
ist, or other creator
derivatives (duh-RIV-uh-tivz) something taken from or based on
another work
intellectual property (in-tuh-LEK-choo-uhl PRAH-pur-tee) creative
works that are legally protected by copyright, trademark, or
patent
licenses (LYE-suhns-ez) documents that officially grant permission
for a person to own, use, or do something
noncommerical (non-kuh-MUR-shul) not for profit
patents (PAT-uhnts) legal documents giving the inventor of an
item the sole rights to manufacture or sell it
plagiarism (PLAY-jur-iz-um) the act of stealing the ideas or words
of another person and presenting them as one’s own
public domain (PUHB-lik doh-MANE) work that is unprotected by
copyright and is therefore available to everyone to use or copy
public service announcement (PUHB-lik SUR-viss uh-NOUNS-
muhnt) a commercial that encourages people to take action for
health, safety, or the good of the community
tangible format (TAN-jih-bul FOR-mat) works that can be seen,
touched, heard, or otherwise experienced, and therefore can be
copyrighted
trademarks (TRADE-mahrks) words, pictures, or designs that
show that a product is made by a particular company
31
Find Out More BOOKS
Aoki, Keith, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins. Bound by
Law? Tales from the Public Domain. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2008. (Available in print or as a free dig-
ital download at http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/)
Creative Commons. The Power of Open. e-book retrieved August
18, 2012, from http://thepowerofopen.org.
Popek, Emily. Copyright and Digital Ethics. New York: Rosen
Central, 2011.
WEB SITES
Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org
Learn about the Creative Commons organization and the six
CC licenses; search for CC images, video, and audio you can use
in your projects; and use the online tool to help you figure out
which CC license is right for your work.
Teaching Copyright
www.teachingcopyright.org
This is a set of lesson plans to help teens learn about copyright
in the digital age.
32
Index
About t
he
Author
s
attribution, 18, 25, 29
Cherry Lake Web site, 9, 14, 22, 26, 29
copies, 6, 19copyright definition, 5–6
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, 18
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivs (CC BY-ND) license, 19
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license, 19
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivs (CC BY-NC-ND) license, 20
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license, 20
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license, 18, 23–24, 25, 26
Creative Commons Web site, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28
credit, 5, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26
derivatives, 6, 19distribution rights, 6drawings, 9, 13, 28
expiration, 11–12
fashion designs, 13Flickr Web site, 24, 26, 28, 29
Google Web site, 28, 29
icons, 24, 25, 28illustrations. See draw-ings; photos.
intellectual property, 13
laws, 5–6, 11Library of Congress, 6links, 25, 26logos, 13
Noun Project Web site, 28, 29
patents, 13–14permission, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17
photographs, 7, 8, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28
plagiarism, 10public domain, 11–12, 17
public service announcements, 22
search tools, 26, 28, 29
tangible formats, 8, 10titles, 13, 14, 26trademarks, 13
Uniform Resource Locator (URL), 25
Web sites, 9, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29
Emily Puckett Rodgers helps
their educational resources with the global learning community.
Kristin Fontichiaro
teaches at the University
written many books for
students and adults.